


Upstart

by Cloudgeals



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 04:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudgeals/pseuds/Cloudgeals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her laugh bubbles up like hot bile, spewing repulsively over the table, and the floor, and filling the shot glass until the windowpanes vibrate with it, and it is evil. She is evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upstart

And that's when she thrashes and flails and shouts and screams,  _"WHAT WAS YOUR PROBLEM? I COULD HAVE FUCKING DONE IT! I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING DONE IT!"_

And that's when everyone looks on at her with sad faces and gossiping lips, "Have you heard? She lost her world and her family!"

And she takes another shot, a little more salty this time, vodka on the rocks with tears, and listens harder.

"Haven't we all?"

"Yeah, what's her problem?"

"All that screaming is giving me a headache."

She grits her teeth and her eyes roll back and she slams the empty glass  _downdowndown_  onto the counter until it shatters and all she holds is broken shards, slicing into her palm and making her grunt and pant. And suddenly, she looks down, and she's holding his heart in her hand,  _again,_ and it's killing her.

_Again_.

Sometimes she doesn't drink. Sometimes she watches, because that's all she can do  _(for anyone, dead, alive, somewhere in-between)_  these dark days. She watches from the corner of the shoddy little bar that has become her home, as countless nameless heartless ( _oh but not yet--and it was funny! It was funny right? So fuckin' funny she was going to be sick all over his shoes)_  people spin around, looking, wondering, whimpering, asking the million questions they'd all heard before. Where am I? Where's my husband/daughter/lover/friend (insert the name of your own fucking dead here)? What were those things? And all those people will look around and see others, standing, just standing, because that's what Traverse is for. Standing. No talking--until someone starts screaming--and no answers. And all those people will charge headlong into the Districts, only to be someone's dead wife/mother/lover/friend.

She watches as a boy comes out of the alley. She'd only stopped drinking a few moments ago--when she saw a talking duck and a talking dog and another dog coming through a door that  _everyone_ knows leads only to  _nowhere_  and  _hell_. So she let out a small whimper and put down the glass, gently, because her palms are scared and bandaged and she can't afford it anymore.

He has that look-- _the one that every denizen knows, the look of wonder, the look of excitement_ \--but it will surely fade away when he realizes how he got here. She watches him climb the stairs of the Accessory Shop, the one that the old man runs, the old man that drinks too sometimes, and whispers/screams things like  _Rockets_  and  _Engines_  and  _Shera_.

She watches him until there is nothing left to watch, until he disappears behind that shop door and she wonders if he'll come out alive; not that the old man strikes her as a murderer, but she's sure the boy will find out now, and she's wondering if the news is  _actually enough to kill someone._

He comes back out. Alive. And there's something on his face that she hasn't seen in a long time, not since  _him_  and sneaking out of the window because there's something so simply thrilling in something so incredibly terrifying, if only because it's a new adventure. This boy can't be even sixteen yet, and she wants to ask him if he's ever snuck out, or hung his feet out of hammock, or swung so far up that the sky was tangible?

She watches him disappear behind bigger doors this time, the doors to memory hell (which, as it turns out, is a district, not a lane) and she feels her throat close again, and it's almost a set occurrence when she starts screaming and shouting and feeling so damn vindictive that all she wants to do is find  _him_  so she can beat out his brains with her empty shot glass and drink her salty vodka around his teeth because-- _no--one--has---the---right---to---fucking---leave---her._

Her laugh bubbles up like hot bile, spewing repulsively over the table, and the floor, and filling the shot glass until the windowpanes vibrate with it, and it is  _evil_. She is evil. She is snapping, she knows it, snapping because of a damn little boy with an expression she can't place and because the last time she saw such a strange expression it was on an older boy whose face contorted because there was something behind her that he saw, and he was terrified as he charged, even though neither of them even knew what the things were. And she could have helped,  _could have fucking helped_ , if he'd let her, and maybe she'd have been able to do more than watch and sprint forward (but not fast enough because she wore his too-big boots) when his body fell and his heart rose  _oh and when she snatched it back it was like icy splinters of glass on fire and filled with one thousand million volts and she couldn't hold on because it was making her eyes bleed_ \-- _!_

Her laugh crackles like electric currents running through the air, through her heart, and she can't hide behind the vodka anymore. She can't not remember  _him_  and she can't not remember  _not him,_  as in  _dead him_.

And he is out there somewhere. Out there like the one that killed him, a small black mass, shifting and slinking, looking for more boys to steal and more girls to kill.

With a broken electric sob, Arlene flings her shot glass across the room and charges out the door, toward memory hell, because she'll find him somehow, her heart is strong and  _his_ , and though death is better than this, they'd promised each other to be together in death, so why not be together in hell?

She strikes the doors open with all the force she possesses as she flashes by those standing (standing in Traverse Town, talking and whispering and showering her in pity parties that no one really meant or attended) and into the Second District.

She looks wildly around, her blonde bangs whipping her in the face, her eyes crackling. Where is death? Where is the dark? Oh, yeah, the  _one time she doesn't fucking want it-_

It tackles her from behind, and Arlene lies on the cobblestones. She fades away and no one sees her, no one at all, because the dog and duck and dog and boy were products of her drunken imagination-- _right_?--and she fades right to a white room. But it is blacker than white has the right to be, almost like the darkness makes up the foundation.

There is a hooded figure in front of her. His deep voice speaks. "Welcome. Larxene."


End file.
